The present invention relates a programming apparatus having arrangement for formulating an automation task to be performed in the form of a programming language for automation apparatuses, in particular a programming language allowing a function plan graph and/or an instruction list and/or a contact plan to be displayed on a display unit, the function plan diagram and/or instruction list and/or contact plan being provided with at least one network having operands and their logic operations and the arrangement generating a control program from the automating task formulated, which can be run on an automation apparatus, for controlling an industrial process. Furthermore, the present invention relates an analysis unit for analyzing a process error in a network.
A programming apparatus such as the above-described is described in the publication xe2x80x9cAutomatisieren mit SIMATIC S5-115Uxe2x80x9d (Automating with SIMATIC S5-115U) by Hans Berger, 1995. A user can also formulate the mode of process monitoring in addition to formulating the automating task. Both the subprogram thus formulated for process monitoring and the subprogram thus formulated for automating are components of a user program, which is compiled using a suitable compiler and finally transferred into a control program that can be run in an automating apparatus in the form of such a control program. Because the process monitoring task is formulated together with the automation task, the user program is difficult to read and unclear if subprogram branching frequently occurs.
German Utility Application 297 10 751.8, describes that designing process monitoring be made possible through the selection and marking of operands, for example, of a contact plan that can be displayed on a display unit, the selected and marked operands being transferred into a process monitoring program via a program interface.
An object of the present invention is to provide a programming apparatus of the type named in the preamble that would simplify process error analysis by an analysis unit.
This object is achieved by the features provided according to the present invention.
By separating the operands and operations (logical operations) that can be stored in an operand list and in a logic list, a process error can be analyzed at any time in an analysis unit, which can be a component of the programming apparatus. The only requirement is that the status of each operand of the network provided with the marked operands be detected. The status of the operands is detected during the processing cycles in the control mode of the automation apparatus, whereby it is ensured that process error analysis can be performed with the operand values that were present at the time the process error appeared.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the automating apparatus can basically process the actual control program due to the fact that the status of the operands is only input in the event of an error or after predefinable points in time.
In one embodiment of the present invention, process monitoring can be designed in the same context as the formulation of the automating task, the user concentrating basically on achieving the actual object, namely the formulation of this automating task.
In another embodiment of the present invention, the design measures can be clearly represented on a display device, thus largely avoiding design errors.
Due to the fact that, by marking an operand, a parameter mask assigned to this operand can be displayed on the display unit, with at least one monitoring criterion of the operand being defined by parameters, design is simplified and design costs are reduced.